AND I BEQUEATH MY RENT CONTROLLED APARTMENT IN NYC TO ...

BIRTH RIGHT CITIZENSHIP!

SS-ADT AN UPDATE ... WOULD YOU LIKE A HAPPY MEAL WITH THAT ...

IS OUR SOUTHERN BORDER IS OUR CASABLANA?

RIVETING, FEARLESS, GRIPPING AND VERY STUPID!

Clinton Crony Corruption: More Questionable Behavior Revealed In Hillary Clinton’s “Deleted” Emails
By Elizabeth Vaughn - on October 24, 2018

Clinton Corruption <--- i="">BUT I DIGRESS

...

Hillary Clinton is good to her friends. But what’s $47 million to her when it doesn’t come out of her own pocket?

It’s been so long that we almost forgot about the 32,000 emails that Hillary claimed were personal back in 2015. You remember, the ones about yoga and Chelsea’s wedding. They were irrelevant, she told us, so she ordered them to be deleted and then destroyed. Unfortunately for Hill, the FBI was able to retrieve a portion of them.

The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reported on a series of emails that were released on August 28th in response to a FOIA request. Among them are emails between Hillary and longtime friend and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been heavily lobbying her to drum up business for Symbion Power, located in Africa. He had recently become the company’s Director. (Wilson had been the ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe.)

Hillary Clinton’s emails as secretary of state have revealed that her longtime friend, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, lobbied her heavily on behalf of Symbion Power.
Soon after Wilson began contacting Clinton about Symbion, a foreign aid agency chaired by Clinton awarded the company $47 million in contracts to build a power plant in Tanzania.
A newly released email shows Clinton told Wilson she visited the power plant at his urging.

While serving as secretary of state in 2011, Hillary Clinton visited a power company in Africa at the urging of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, a longtime Clinton friend who happened to serve as a director at the company Symbion Power.

A year after Wilson’s lobbying efforts began, “a foreign aid agency chaired by Clinton, awarded the company a $47 million contract to build a power plant in Tanzania.”

Both the foreign aid agency, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Symbion “have downplayed Wilson’s influence on Clinton, however, an email recently released by the Department of State shows Clinton heard of the company through Wilson.”

Following a diplomatic visit to the company’s energy plant in Dar es Salaam in 2011, Clinton sent the following email to Wilson on June 12, 2011:


You did not oversell Symbion. I was very impressed by the project and the people who are part of the team. Thx for bringing the company to my attention and then pushing for me to make the stop.

Unsurprisingly, Sidney Blumenthal, who was a mutual friend of both Clinton and Wilson initiated the communications. In an email routed through Blumenthal, Wilson wrote, “We will be bidding on all of the upcoming MCC financed power generation and distribution projects.”

Clinton appeared interested in the topic, writing to aides: “Pls be sure I see Joe.”


Wilson’s emailed Clinton on November 10, 2009. “As I wrote to you earlier, I am a director for Symbion Power and may soon assume more direct responsibility for all of Africa as Symbion expands there from its current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

(Wilson noted that Blumenthal had previously given Clinton information detailing Symbion’s “success in the most difficult and dangerous environments.”)

We now want to bring that business model and philosophy to Africa where the social entrepreneurship and the development of skilled labor is imperative for Africa’s long term economic prospects, as you have so forcefully articulated in past comments.

The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reports:

Clinton also forwarded one inquiry from Wilson to Jacob Lew, who served at the time as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. In the Dec. 22, 2009 email, Wilson pressed Clinton and Lew on the process to obtain U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts in Afghanistan.

Clinton and Wilson also met at the State Department in December 2009, according to Clinton’s calendars.

It is unclear whether Wilson’s relentless lobbying helped Symbion, but he has argued in a lawsuit he filed against Symbion in 2015 that his work for the company helped it secure federal contracts.

In an Oct. 15, 2015 court filing, Wilson claimed he “was directly and deeply involved on behalf of Symbion in pursuing and developing the business opportunities for Symbion, including the Millennium Challenge Fund.”

Symbion disputed Wilson’s claims, saying his contacts with Clinton did not contribute to the firm winning the $50 million MCC contract. Instead, Symbion called the revelation of Wilson’s emails “embarrassing.” MCC has also denied that Clinton helped Symbion win the Tanzania contract.

But other emails show Clinton could likely be taking direct action to help Symbion at Wilson’s request.

In one series of emails from July 2011, Wilson asked Clinton to intervene in a business dispute between Symbion and Jeffrey Immelt, who then served as CEO of General Electric.

“I know that you mentioned that you were going to call Jeff lmmelt after your trip,” Wilson wrote in a July 20, 2011 email.

“When you make that call, I would appreciate your telling him that Symbion, which is already operating a GE plant in [Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam] can only expand that plant to meet the challenge if GE is prepared to share some of the inherent risk with us and waives the payment guarantee requirement.”

It is unclear whether Clinton spoke to Immelt about Symbion, but emails show that she did forward Wilson’s request to Johnnie Carson, the then-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Carson then contacted Alfonso Lenhardt, the U.S.’s ambassador to Tanzania, who then reached out to GE.

There’s nothing illegal about these actions. This type of backscratching goes on every day in Washington and it pales in comparison to Hillary’s many criminal offenses. But it demonstrates the way Hillary conducted her affairs at both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. And if I represented one of the rival bidders for this project, I would be extremely disturbed.

Hillary would argue that she was correct to delete these emails because they were personal business.

This story makes us wonder what other items of interest might be found in the emails that her minions were instructed to destroy. These emails are being released in tranches, the last one occurring on October 4th. We’ll stay tuned.

One thing is certain. Hillary Clinton makes it rain for her friends.

IF A PRIVATE OR PUBLIC COMPANY GETS GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY MUST THEY ABIDE BY THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

ACTIVE DENIAL SYSTEM ... CROWD CONTROL

Mattis: Military already moving equipment to southern border

The U.S. military has already begun delivering jersey barriers to the southern border in conjunction with plans to deploy active duty troops there, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Sunday as a caravan of Central Americans slowly heads across Mexico toward the United States.
Mattis told reporters traveling with him that details of the deployment are still being worked out but he should have them Sunday night. They will include exactly how many forces are needed. It was unclear when the details will be made public.

The additional troops will provide logistical and other support to the Border Patrol, and will bolster the efforts of the approximately 2,000 National Guard forces already there. The new forces are expected to provide logistical assistance such as air support and equipment, including vehicles and tents.

National Guard troops routinely perform those same functions, so it is not clear why active duty forces are being used.

President Donald Trump for the past week has been calling attention to the caravan heading by foot into southern Mexico, but it is still hundreds of miles from U.S. soil.

The National Guard is often used by states to help with border security. But active duty troops are rarely deployed within the United States except for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods.

RULES OF THE ROAD ... WE DON'T NEED NO STINK'N RULES

THE CARAVAN OF Mysteries and losers! 

Where do they crap?

The Hondurans in the caravan, the 7,000 people walking north to America, where do they go to the bathroom?

And eat and sleep and store their clothes?

And how is it that after a week on the road they are clean and their hair and clothes are well kept?

How is any of this possible?

And why do these people, supposedly fleeing intolerable conditions in their homeland, carry little flags from their homeland and break into its national anthem when the TV cameras show up?

And speaking of which, for oppressed people, they all seem to be pretty well fed, well groomed and well dressed. Their hair is neat and newly cut, their clothes are clean and in good repair, and they are built like people who have had ample nutrition all their lives, being well developed and, many of them, overweight.

And none of them look dirty or unkempt, like they had been sleeping on the ground for the last week.

There’s just nothing in any of this that makes sense.

Supposedly, these several thousand people spontaneously decided to leave Honduras, walking north in a group, hoping to trek the length of gang-plagued Mexico and present themselves as refugees and prospective Democrats at the American border.

Which, again, makes no sense whatsoever.

And leaves a lot of big questions unanswered, and ignored by the press. 

• Such as, who organized this? 
• Who is paying for it? 
• How have they covered 500 miles in a week?

Seriously. Any number of American “reporters” have walked beside a sympathetic walker and talked about how this particular woman and her children had trekked half a thousand miles over the last week or so.

That’s 71 miles a day!

The best soldiers through history have been able to march 25 miles a day.
 

HOLY SHIT!

3 TONS OF FECES EACH DAY ... WHERE? 

• How have 7,000 people been fed and watered? 
• And how have they gone to the bathroom? 
• Where is the toliet paper sourced and stored?
• If the average person across the world produces about a pound of solid waste a day, that means that these folks are somehow disposing of more than three tons of feces each day.

That’s a heck of a lot of crap, even for a Central American roadway.

Provisioning such an army of people – the equivalent of 10 combat battalions in most of the world’s militaries – is a large task. Transporting and distributing the food and water necessary to keep those people moving is a massive chore which the press says nothing about.

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

The entire enterprise, as a spontaneous ad hoc event, is implausible.

As an orchestrated international attempt to influence an American election, it starts to make sense.

And ought to alarm us.

Unless it’s only Russians we don’t want screwing with our democracy.

THE U.S. YELLOW NEWS IS COMPLICIT!

Unfortunately, none of this has made the evening news. It’s almost as if the press, in whatever scheme is afoot, gladly accepts its role as propagandists to the American people.
 

THE REAL SYMPATHETIC STORY HAS YET TO BE TOLD ... WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR THESE PEOPLE TO GET BACK HOME!?

Every story is sympathetic, as if an attempt to enlist viewers and readers in this caravan and the politics it symbolizes.

And so the story is not about an orchestrated attempt to manipulate electoral opinion and violate the borders and laws of the United States, it is about compassion and Trump and xenophobia and racism. It is the October surprise, it is the Blue Wave.

And it is all nonsense.
Because all of these people, if legitimate, have the ability to apply for American asylum in their own country – as do the residents of most nations of the world. We have consulates and embassies for a reason, and this is one of those reasons.

We also have laws and an oath of office for a reason.

Laws, so that “we the people” through our elected representatives clearly and systematically govern our society. Law is the means by which the people express and exercise their sovereignty. Disobedience to law is disobedience to the will of the people, it is the subverting of their sovereignty and franchise.

Breaking the law is denying you the vote. Your vote elects representatives – lets you pick the country’s direction – and the representatives write the law. If that law is ignored, your representation becomes meaningless.

You get screwed.

And the oath of office?

Members of Congress – even Democrats – swear an oath to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution, which establishes our system of laws and specifically charges the Congress with making the rules of naturalization and immigration.

Who comes across the border and under what conditions they can stay is a constitutional responsibility of the Congress. That is to be determined by a congressional vote, not by a Honduran mob.

Failure to insist on that – even for Democrats – is a violation of your congressman’s oath of office.

So there is not a Democrat or Republican response to this travelling army of invaders – there is only an American response.

DOES ANYONE HAVE AAA AUTOMOBILE ROAD SIDE SERVICE?

And that is: Turn around and go home.

Because the law of the United States does not allow a mass entry like this. The law does not declare the borders open.

If Democrats and progressives don’t like that, they can try to change the law. If America’s progressives want open borders and believe all the world’s people have a right to live in the United States – as they say they do – then they should adjust immigration law accordingly.

But until then, if they are to keep their oaths of office, they must stand for the law and the border.

And they must tell their surrogates to turn around and go home.

Because this caravan is nothing more than a bunch of political crap. And that's a lot of crap!!!

QANON ... BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER

Oct 9 2018 20:42:13 (EST) !!mG7VJxZNCI Q
373→

Statement release 10.9.18 [p_AUTHORITY1]
General Statement:
We understand that there is extreme fatigue and frustration re: the wheels of justice [slow].
Exclude emotion and personal desire, instead use logic and critical thinking based on situational awareness [undo a lifetime of evil & corruption[infestation] in the span of less than 2 years w/ a corrupt DOJ & FBIin place?].
[Process & Planning – Law and Order]
[Military OP]
How can you make arrests [non military]prior to first fully cleaning out corrupt elements [at the top]of those departments [FBI][DOJ]that oversee ‘investigation & prosecution’ in the United States [they [themselves] are the very ones engaged in the illegal treasonous acts]?
James Comey, Director – FIRED
Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director – FIRED
Jim Rybicki, Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor – FIRED
James Baker, General Counsel – FIRED
Bill Priestap, Director of Counterintelligence (Strzok’s boss) – Cooperating witness [power removed]
Peter Strzok, Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence – FIRED
Lisa Page, Office of General Counsel – FIRED/FORCED
Mike Kortan, Assistant Director for Public Affairs – FIRED
Josh Campbell, Special Assistant to Comey – FIRED
David Laufman, Chief of the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section [NAT SEC– HRCemail invest]– FIRED/FORCE
John Carlin, Assistant Attorney General – Head of DOJ’s National Security Division – FIRED/FORCED
Sally Yates, Deputy Attorney General & Acting Attorney General – FIRED
Mary McCord, Acting Assistant Attorney General – Acting Head of DOJ’s National Security Division – FIRED/FORCED
Bruce Ohr, Associate Deputy Attorney General – Demoted 2x – cooperating witness [power removed]– TERMINATION IMMINENT
Rachel Brand, Associate Attorney General – No. 3 official behind Deputy AG Rosenstein – FIRED/FORCED
[Batter’s Box]
Michael Steinbach
John Glacalone
Randy Coleman
Trisha Anderson
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/fashion/weddings/trisha-anderson-charles-newman-weddings.html
Kevin Clinesmith
Tashina Gauhar
Sally Moyer
How do you ensure those prosecuted [non military]would receive an impartial judgement based on the RULE OF LAW?
Think Federal Judge rulings [obstruction][POTUS’ granted CONSTITUTIONAL authority].
How do you ensure ‘appeals’ to the U.S. Supreme Court are evaluated impartially > based on the RULE OF LAW?
Think Justice K (5 to 4).
Military Law v Criminal Law
“Enemy Combatant”
How do you navigate around installed BLOCKADE?
[MUELLER]designed to take-in evidence needed to ‘expose’ DS [DOJ block re: Mueller ‘evidence’ ongoing investigation].
[MUELLER]designed to limit POTUS’ ability to maneuver.
[MUELLER]designed to ‘stall-for-time’ until MIDTERM ELECTIONS to TERMINATE all HOUSE / SENATE ongoing investigations.
[MUELLER]designed to ‘safeguard’ D_PARTY_BASE false narrative re: RUSSIA COLLUSION [POTUS CHEATED – EVIL – SKY FALLING]in effort to DIVIDE and MOBILIZE for future protests, riots, threats, violence, FF’s, etc.
[MUELLER]designed to provide FAKE NEWS w/ ammunition to sway public opinion, obstruct foreign + domestic agenda, fuel impeachment/removal, fuel anti-POTUS [DIVISION][prevent UNITY], etc..
[MUELLER]designed to demonstrate to foreign players that OLD GUARD still pulls strings.
[MUELLER]designed to mobilize D_PARTY for MIDTERM VOTE WIN.
[MUELLER]designed to push D_PARTY backers to DONATE [GOFUNDME – D_PARTY].
[MUELLER]designed as PUBLIC OUTCRY EXCUSE should criminal charges be brought against them [‘we are being ‘politically’ attacked because MUELLER…].
How do you REMOVE installed BLOCKADE?
DECLAS—DECLAS—DECLAS
How do you navigate around installed corrupt [FBI][DOJ]?
USE A STEALTH BOMBER
Who must authorize firing of FBI/DOJ officials?
Why did McCabe try to take SESSIONSout?
https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/fired-fbi-official-authorized-perjury-investigation-against-sessions-1191727171576?v=raila&
What was the SESSIONSSENATE CONF VOTE?
52-47
No. 175
Logical thinking v clickbait.
Q

2379

Oct 9 2018 16:19:44 (EST) !!mG7VJxZNCI Q ID: d3824b
3412993→

>>3219413
Guangdong = Guangzhou = Shenzhen?
Do you believe in coincidences?
Q

---

Comment on this Q post (1Comment)

2378

Oct 9 2018 15:41:49 (EST) !!mG7VJxZNCI Q
372→

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-what-trumps-ethanol-plan-means-for-farmers-refiners-and-motorists-2018-10-09
Increase ethanol [corn]concentration in gasoline >>> effort to combat CHINA’s attempts to harm our farmers.
[Announcement Tonight]
Q

---

Comment on this Q post (No Comments)

2377

Oct 9 2018 15:21:14 (EST) !!mG7VJxZNCI Q
371→

>>297
No. 297 – where was this picture taken?
Hanging of flags traditional/occurs in this part of the country for what holiday?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/new-evidence-of-hacked-supermicro-hardware-found-in-u-s-telecom
“Western intelligence contacts that the device was made at a Supermicro subcontractor factory in Guangzhou, a port city in southeastern China. Guangzhou is 90 miles upstream from Shenzhen, dubbed the `Silicon Valley of Hardware,’”
What state does [Feinstein]represent?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-spy-sen-feinstein/2018/08/09/0560ca60-9bfd-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f0be11930e64
GOOG& CHINA
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/09/google-china-censored-search-engine/
Dragonfly
Look HERE [RUSSIA]
DO NOT LOOK HERE [CHINA]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeVrMniBjSc
Worth 43 minutes of your time.
ALL [INSIDE]ROADS TO CHINA ARE BEING CLOSED.
AMERICA IS NO LONGER FOR SALE.
Q

THEIR OWN DEMOGRAPHICS WILL BE THEIR WORSE NIGHTWARE

DID TRUMP COLLUDE WITH RUSSIA THE CLIMATE WARMING?

DAWN OF CONSCIENCE -- A RED WAVE IS COMING

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION ...

TWO FUTURES DIVERGED IN TIME ... AND CHINA IS TRAPPED IN HER PASTED DECISIONS

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, 

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

Though as for that the passing there 

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black. 

Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET ... AND THIS LITTLE PIGGY ... WELL LET'S SAY HAS A BIGGER TRUMP CARD

How Africa Has Become a Second Front in the US–China Struggle

On September 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the opening ceremony of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation Beijing Summit in 2018 that China is willing to provide to African countries $60 billion through various channels including government assistance, financial institutions, and corporate investment. Some of the countries in this list are among Africa’s least developed, or the most heavily in debt, and now Beijing has exempted them from making loan payments that were originally due at the end of this year.

Xi’s statements sparked negative responses in Chinese online circles, with many people accusing the leader of “want only showering coins.”

Behind this overly generous largess, however, lies Beijing’s calculus for a shift in its international economic strategy.

China Cannot Face the US Head-on

A careful examination of the specifications and time points of Xi Jinping’s proposed $60 billion investment suggest a twofold purpose. 

1. One is to seize opportunity during a period of adjustment in the American economic strategy. 
2. The second is that the trade war has put China in a very difficult position. Rather than conceding to U.S. demands, the Chinese regime opened a second front in Africa.

Let us first examine why the investment or aid package is valued at $60 billion. On Aug. 31, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “To Counter China, U.S. Looks to Invest Billions More Overseas,” which the U.S. government’s decision to merge several little-known government agencies into a new agency—the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USIDFC), which is authorized to make $60 billion in investments. Its parent body, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), was established in 1971 by President Nixon to help U.S. companies invest in the development of emerging economies with a mind to realize Washington’s foreign policy goals.

Following its establishment, the USIDFC took charge of several projects managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, among which the largest is the Development Credit Authority. Having these rights helps U.S. companies compete evenly with China in terms of financing options for major infrastructure and development projects in third-party countries.

The contest between China and the United States in terms of power construction in Africa began as early as during the Obama era. In the final year of Obama’s term, Washington launched the “Electrify Africa Act of 2016.” Additionally, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, first introduced in 2000, was vastly altered to comply with World Trade Organization regulations, its period of effect was extended until September 2025. These bills became the two pillars of the United States’ new Africa strategy.

Not to be outdone, in 2017 China announced that it would, at “Chinese speed,” build Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

After Trump took office, he originally planned to make major adjustments to his Africa policy. Citing the dilapidation of U.S. infrastructure, he argued against large non-military aid commitments for other countries. Believing U.S. infrastructure to be dilapidated, he found large amounts of non-military aid unnecessary. He even proposed that the “food for peace” project that mainly targets Africa be removed from this year’s budget entirely. Later, amidst the Sino–American trade war and as his understanding of China gradually deepened, Trump came to realize that Africa was the lynchpin of the “Belt and Road” initiative. He thus supported the bill proposed by the House of Representatives to merge several functionally similar institutions into the USIDFC and expand its funding ceiling to give the institution the right to provide up to $60 billion in development financing. This bill has successfully passed in the House of Representatives and now only needs to pass the Senate vote. Nowadays, the attitude on China in the U.S. legislature is relatively united, so the bill should go through without much resistance.

China’s $60 billion Africa investment is in direct response to the $60 billion figure floated by the USIDFC, and Beijing apparently sees no need to hide this point. Shortly after Xi announced the investment, China’s overseas state mouthpieces began heavily reporting on how due to the rising global influence of China’s “Belt and Road” project, the United States would soon finalize a law to merge several financial institutions.

Why Africa?

The Sino-US trade war is currently progressing at moderate intensity. Nov. 6 is the day of the U.S. midterm election. As Trump continues to deal with resistance from the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, the Chinese regime is banking its hopes on the Republican Party losing control of Congress, thus giving power to Democrats who might loosen up on trade.

At a Beijing seminar on Aug. 28, Wei Jianguo, former vice minister of commerce of China and current vice president of the China Center for International Economic Exchange, explained the Chinese regime’s intentions: in the next five years, China plans to increase the value of its exports to Africa to $500 billion annually, and thus use Africa to replace the United States as China’s largest export market. In this way, even if the United States puts tariffs on all $500 billion of goods that China exports to it, China would gain the final victory as its own imports of U.S. goods are worth only $150 billion. Wei did, however, concede that Chinese exports to Africa are not wholly comparable to that of exporting to the United States.

In addition to the export substitution role, Beijing also bears in mind the fact that China and Africa have cooperated on economics and trade for many years, whether through loans or trade, and many African countries have already deposited the yuan into their own financial systems. With the yuan weakening against the dollar, and facing a difficult situation where total foreign exchange reserves are being maintained at 3 trillion yuan, promoting the internationalization of the renminbi can help alleviate pressure. More than 60 countries and regions—including 14 in Africa—have included the yuan in their foreign exchange reserves since its 2016 recognition by the International Monetary Fund as one of the five major reserve currencies. Some countries, such as Nigeria, are also willing to use the yuan as a settlement currency.

Can China Win in Africa?

Owing to its prestige and momentum, I believe that China would prevail over the United States in Africa. In China’s African investments, the government is the financial backer, so the investments are being made regardless of their profitability. The absence of a dividing line between aid and investment is not only a unique characteristic, but also a strength. Included in Xi Jinping’s $60 billion commitment is $15 billion in grants, zero-interest loans and concessional loans; $20 billion in credit lines; $10 billion in a special fund for China-Africa development financing; and a $5 billion special fund for financing Chinese imports from Africa. The Chinese regime has long practiced this sort of non-distinction between aid and investment. For example, in 2013, a Chinese representative said at the African Investment Summit that before 2025, China will provide Africa a total of $1 trillion dollars’ worth of loans, including direct investment, soft loans, various types of business loans, aid, and the like.

The United States cannot do things this way, as it defines aid and investment very clearly. Efforts to market aid as investment will inevitably hit resistance, so it is impossible for the U.S. government to act as overtly as the Chinese.
That being said, it remains to be seen if China’s investments will have the desired effect.

The mainstay of China’s foreign investment is the state-owned enterprise, and over the years, overseas investments by SOEs have mostly been squandered. In 2016, China’s state-run media Yangguang.com openly acknowledged the failure rate of China’s overseas mining investments as exceeding 95 percent.

During the same year, I said in the article “Why Are China’s Overseas Investments so Trouble-Ridden?” that the main countries included in the “Belt and Road” initiative are in Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Excluding Europe, most of these countries have poor international reputations due to their fairly high political risk. From the credit ratings provided by international rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, most of these countries have credit ratings below B. Iran did not even have a rating.

Reality has also shown that China’s Belt and Road is vulnerable to major setbacks. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia visited Beijing in August to seek China’s understanding: because Malaysia’s national debt had soared to $250 billion, it had no choice but to suspend three major infrastructure projects. About 70 countries are currently participating in China’s One Belt One Road plan, many of which owe large debts. The Washington-based think tank “Center for Global Development” estimated in March this year that the Belt and Road Initiative has mired eight countries in severe debt.

Compared with Chinese state-owned enterprises, the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which will become the main body of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, has had a good profit record for the past 40 years. Thus, the United States’s restructuring of the corporation to undertake projects from the U.S. Agency for International Development is also taking into consideration the corporation’s profitability.

Whether for Western countries or China, it is not difficult to reach an agreement when investing in third-world economies. The problem lies in reclaiming those investments and ensuring profitability. China has no means of punishing countries that fail to repay their debts. Meanwhile, most Western companies have investments in developing countries, but those countries do not dare casually owe debts to Western companies because the local political and socioeconomic elites often store their money in Western banks, and their children study in Western schools. The United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union have many options for punishing countries that do not hold up their end of the deal. But China is not a place for the children of a country’s rulers to study, nor is China’s financial system able to become a safe deposit box for dictators as it is in Western countries. China has no leverage against countries that fail to honor economic agreements.

From Beijing’s perspective, as the China–U.S. trade war proves difficult to resolve, increasing investment and exports to Africa can be seen as an attempt to reposition the Chinese economy’s strategic position globally. But whether it can achieve its intended purpose is another matter.

He Qinglian is a prominent Chinese author and economist. Currently based in the United States, she authored “China’s Pitfalls,” which concerns corruption in China’s economic reform of the 1990s, and “The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China,” which addresses the manipulation and restriction of the press. She regularly writes on contemporary Chinese social and economic issues.

PUERTO RICO AND GUAM LAND-BASED AIRCRAFT CARRIERS ...

FBI Raided The Municipal Offices Of The City of San Juan, Puerto Rico

A lot of the problems that Puerto Rico endured after Hurricane Maria were due to local corruption and there were a lot of questions about local leaders especially San Juan’s mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

Puerto Rico has a long history of corruption as anything controlled by the Democrats usually do. Let the chips fall where they may!

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz is one of the most despicable people. If anyone cashed in on the pain of Puerto Rico it was Cruz with her silly hats and t-shirts coupled with the wasting of aid left to spoil. It wouldn’t surprise me if they find her elbow-deep in the aid cookie jar.

Twitchy:

As we all know, San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz (@CarmenYulinCruz), and President Donald Trump have repeatedly sparred over the past year regarding the federal response to the hurricanes that leveled Puerto Rico in 2017 with Trump blaming corruption for many of the island’s problems:

Mayor Cruz’s reaction:

Translation: At this time, members of the FBi are intervening in the Municipal Tower of SJ. My instructions as always are of total collaboration

I have no more information right now. We all have a duty to work together to clarify this situation 2/3

If someone has done something wrong, they must be subjected to due process and face the consequences of their actions. 3/3 More

The Hill:

FBI agents raided San Juan’s municipal building on Tuesday amid an investigation into purchasing practices used by city officials, including Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

Video posted on Twitter shows several uniformed FBI agents proceeding into the building Tuesday morning. Local journalist Luis Guardiola noted in a tweet that dozens of FBI agents were involved in the raid.

A spokesman for the agency told news service elnuevodia.com that Tuesday’s raid was related to an ongoing investigation into whether the mayor’s office and other city officials had shown favoritism when the city agreed to a contract with the company BR Solutions for $4.7 million over two years. More

Any honest person knows the government of Puerto Rico is corrupt. It’s time to either make them a state, so that they must live up to U.S. standards and oversight, or cut them loose, so they are completely on their own.

FROM ________ (FILL IN THE BLANK) WITH LOVE ...

Mercenaries Killed in Syria Were Part of Russian-Backed Hybrid Force
02/21/2018

Dozens of Russian mercenaries killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria last week were part of a secret Kremlin-backed private military company, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

The dead fighters worked for the Wagner company, part of Moscow’s use of hybrid warfare—covert military and influence operations that include use of so-called “little green men” — unconventional forces operating without official insignia. The forces were first seen in 2014 during the military takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia.

“They are a private army,” said Vasyl Hrytsak, head of Security Service of Ukraine, known as SBU, in a recent interview.

Ukraine believes the Wagner company was formed, equipped, and financed by Russian intelligence services for military, terrorist, and other criminal activities in support of Russian geopolitical interests.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters enroute to Europe Tuesday the U.S. airstrike was carried out on pro-Syrian regime forces near the Euphrates River in Syria.
Mattis said the Central Command was told there were no Russians in the force targeted in the attack.

“There is now reporting in the press—I don’t have any reporting—that some Russians—not Russian federation soldiers, but Russian contractors—were among the casualties,” he said without elaborating.

The unacknowledged nature of the covert Russian paramilitary group prompted Moscow to deny that any Russian troops were among the forces targeted in the bombing strike. The Central Command communicates with the Russians prior to such airstrikes to avoid unintended casualties.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday five Russians were killed in the Feb. 7 airstrike. Other sources said between 80 and 300 Russians working for Wagner were killed, Reuters reported.

The BBC reported that associates of two Russian fighters killed in the strike confirmed their deaths and said they were employed by the Wagner company. They were identified as Vladimir Loginov, an ethnic Cossack from Russia’s western Kaliningrad region, and Kirill Ananyev, a radical nationalist from Moscow.

Reports from the region say as many as 200 fighters were killed in the attack carried out in response to strikes by pro-Syrian fighters aligned with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The pro-Syrian forces had attacked positions of U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces near the town of Khursham in eastern Syria.

Hrytsak, the SBU chief, said the SBU has been tracking the Wagner Group since June 2014 when the fighters were first detected operating in Ukraine.

“When we started identifying members of this private army, these so-called little green men, we made an announcement in October 2017 that we can identify by name about 1,500 members of this military company.”

The group has also been conducting military operations in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.

The military contractors are well-armed and have been equipped with armored vehicles, tanks, and rocket artillery. The mercenaries also conduct intelligence operations.

The company recruits both former military personnel, including snipers and Spetsnaz special operations forces, as well as those with criminal backgrounds.

According to an SBU briefing paper on the Wagner army, the group is headed by a Ukrainian-born Russian named Dmitriy Valerievich Utkin, known by the nom de guerre as Wagner. Utkin is a former Russian GRU military intelligence operative.

The briefing lists two casualties of Wagner mercenaries last year at the same location, Deir al-Zour, in an airstrike that killed at least 100 people in Syria.

Central Command spokesman Col. John Thomas declined to comment on the strike but described the operation as a “tactical engagement” that sent a message.

“There was a hostile action which required a self-defense reaction,” Thomas said. “We notified the Russians over the de-confliction telephone line. Who the hostiles were is sort of academic to the incident. We expect others will not make that same choice again.”

The three-hour U.S. attack was carried out with B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships, F-15E attack planes, Apache attack helicopters and Reaper drones.

The SBU, to expose the group’s links to the Russian government, has posted intercepted phone conversations on its website between Utkin and senior Russian government and military officials.

The service also obtained photos of Wagner company officials, including Utkin, being awarded medals by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the Ukrainians, beginning in August 2015 the Wagner Company dispatched 1,350 fighters to Syria. They were joined by 2,000 pro-Syrian regime fighters. The combined forces are deployed near Latakia and Homs and Wagner fighters were key elements of the pro-Syrian forces that invaded Palmyra in the spring of 2016.

Wagner mercenaries are guarding regime energy facilities also. By early 2017, the number of Wagner personnel deployed to Syria was around 5,000 mercenaries.

By January, the SBU counted 88 Wagner employees killed in Syrian fighting.

Ukraine regards the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization and stepped up targeting its fighters after the group shot down a Ukrainian military transport in June 2014 near Luhansk, killing 49 Ukrainian troops.

About 60 percent of the mercenaries are non-Slavs, including some 200 Serbians. Others include people from North Caucasus, Buryatia, Udmurtia, and Russians from Central Asia. The use of non-Slavs is aimed at making identification of the mercenaries as Russian paramilitaries difficult.

As a result of casualties and exposure by the SBU, Russia’s government has been under pressure to legalize mercenary groups like the Wagner company. Government action authorizing the groups could be taken as early as the end of February.

Ukraine has notified allied intelligence and security services about the mercenaries, who could be used for military operations in Europe and the United States.

“We’re convinced that if there are going to be provocative actions in third countries somewhere in Europe or in other places, if this is going to be an undeclared war, you’re going to have these green men,” Hrytsak said.

“They could come to any country, even the United States, and do something, so we’re convinced this information needs to be shared.”

By Bill Gertz
Source: Washington Beacon
_________________________________________

DEMOCRATS 1 - TRUMP 0 ... CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA

Record number of families crossing the US border, as Trump threatens a new crackdown



The number of migrant parents entering the United States with children has surged to record levels in the three months since President Donald Trump ended family separations at the border, dealing the administration a deepening crisis three weeks before the midterm elections.

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July, according to unpublished Homeland Security statistics obtained by The Washington Post.

Large groups of 100 or more Central American parents and children have been crossing the Rio Grande and the deserts of Arizona to turn themselves in, and by citing a fear of return, the families are typically assigned a court date and released from custody.

"We're getting hammered daily," said one Border Patrol agent in south Texas who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

THE REAL COST OF THE WALL<-- read="" the="" u="" worth="">

Having campaigned on a promise to stop illegal immigration and build a border wall, Trump now faces a spiraling enforcement challenge with no ready solutions. The soaring arrest numbers - and a new caravan of Central American migrants heading north - have left him in a furious state, White House aides say.

Trump has been receiving regular updates on the border numbers, telling senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and Chief of Staff John Kelly that something has to change, according to senior administration officials.

Aides including Miller and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have continually told the president that many of the children coming across the border are being smuggled illegally and that the United States is being taken advantage of. The president's welling anger has left him pushing once more for a reinstatement of a family separation policy in some form, which he believes is the only thing that has worked, despite the controversy it triggered.

One senior official conceded that the separations were halted to stanch political fury, but ended up sending a "clear signal" that people could cross, adding "now we're actually getting crushed."

GOP strategists working in the midterms said the separations were among the worst polling times of the presidency, and reinstituting the separations would sag numbers for the Republicans, who are already struggling in many close races.

Trump continues to criticize Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to work with Mexico to make it tougher for Central American immigrants to cross its southern border, inserting the issue into ongoing trade negotiations.
A senior DHS official said Wednesday that Nielsen continues to take the lead role engaging with leaders from Central America on migration issues and has been in regular contact with the Mexican government and the transition team of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will take office Dec. 1.

Trump has been lashing out this week at the new caravan of 2,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, who crossed into Guatemala on Monday, pushing past police roadblocks. On Tuesday, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador if their governments "allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States."

Trump urged GOP candidates to campaign on the issue in a tweet Wednesday morning. "Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the form of large Caravans, that the Democrats won't approve legislation that will allow laws for the protection of our country. Great Midterm issue for Republicans!" he wrote.

The latest DHS figures show 107,212 "family units" members were taken into custody during the 2018 fiscal year, obliterating the previous high of 77,857 set in 2016.

There have been several senior-level meetings at the White House about the numbers, administration officials say, where Miller has channeled the president's frustration.

Miller is pushing for a more aggressive stance, including changes at U.S. ports of entry that would make it tougher for asylum-seeking Central Americans to gain admission.

Another option under consideration, known as "binary choice," would detain migrant families together and give parents a choice - stay in immigration jail with their child for months or years as their asylum case proceeds, or allow their child to be assigned to a government shelter while a relative or guardian can apply to gain custody.

Some Homeland Security officials remain wary of the proposal and the potential blowback it could bring, and they lack the detention space to accommodate the record wave of parents and children coming across. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has about 3,300 detention beds at three "family residential centers," but five times as many parents and children are crossing each month. The volume has overwhelmed Border Patrol stations and prompted mass releases.

Though the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas remains the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, Border Patrol agents in recent weeks have seen a new spike in southern Arizona. Busloads of migrant parents and children have been dropped off at churches and charities there by ICE, which has little detention space for families and pregnant women.

The latest Department of Homeland Security figures shows U.S. agents made 396,579 arrests along the Mexico border during the government's 2018 fiscal year, a 30 percent increase over the same period in 2017 when illegal migration dropped to a 56-year low.

Trump viewed the 2017 figures as a validation of his tough rhetoric on illegal immigration and had plans to campaign on the achievement this year. When border arrests jumped earlier this spring, he berated Nielsen and demanded swift action, furious to be losing ground on one of his core issues.

That led to the "zero tolerance" prosecution initiative this spring and the separation of at least 2,500 children from their parents, hundreds of whom were deported without their sons and daughters. The president issued an executive order June 20 ending the practice amid public outcry.

Homeland Security officials have seen a particularly large increase this year in families arriving from Guatemala, where smuggling guides have been encouraging migrants to bring children with them to avoid deportation.

Despite soaring numbers of "family unit" arrests, the number of single adults and minors who arrive without a parent remained essentially flat last month, another indication that more migrants who might have traveled alone in the past are now bringing children with them.

Courts have limited the amount of time minors can be held in immigration jails to 20 days, so many parents who arrive with children are fitted with ankle monitoring bracelets and given a court appointment that may be several months away.

Administration officials blame this "catch and release" model for the growing number of families arriving at the border, proposing to end it by expanding family detention space and changing rules that limit their ability to hold children in long-term custody.

Agents along the border say the family migration surge has continued this month.

"If October is any indication of what's to come, Fiscal Year 2019 is going to be a very busy year," Manuel Padilla, chief of the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector in South Texas, said on Twitter. Agents in the sector, the busiest for illegal crossings, arrested more than 1,900 people last weekend alone, according to Padilla.

ITS COMES A FEW DAYS AFTER KHASHOGGI DISAPPEARANCE ... KHASHOGGI WHO?

ISIS RETURNS: Sick terrorists take 700 hostage - Putin issues warning
ISIS has taken 700 people hostage in an area in Syria controlled by US-backed forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed.
By Rebecca Perring

PUBLISHED: 14:00, Thu, Oct 18, 2018 | UPDATED: 15:02, Thu, Oct 18, 2018

ISIS have taken people hostage in a US-backed part of Syria (Image: GETTY )

The Russian leader said the depraved terrorists had expanded its control in territory controlled by US and US-backed forces.

ISIS issued Russia with an ultimatum and vowed to execute ten people every day.

Speaking in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Putin said the hostages included several US and European nationals.

Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi: "They have issued ultimatums, specific demands and warned that if these ultimatums are not met they will execute 10 people every day."


"The day before yesterday they executed 10 people."

Putin did not specify what the militants' demands were.

He said ISIS detained several nationals south of the Euphrates river in war-torn Syria.

Russia has been engaged militarily in Syria since September 2015 but has aligned itself with Bashar al Assad's regime in opposition to Western nations.

They have issued ultimatums, specific demands and warned that if these ultimatums are not met they will execute 10 people every day.

Almost 3,000 Russian troops are currently based in Syria.

ISIS militants had taken about 700 hostages in Syria's Deir-al Zor province after attacking a refugee camp in an area controlled by US-backed forces, according to the TASS news agency.

Officials said militants had kidnapped around 130 families and taken them to the city of Hajin.

It comes just days after Syria declared the delivery of new, modern missiles from Russia as a new means to not only secure Syria but the entire Middle East as Assad aims to increase his regional allies.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem and Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari spoke together and praised their countries’ victories over ISIS.

Mr. al-Muallem said that the defeat of ISIS "will benefit all the countries of the region and the world”.

Over the past seven years, Syria has faced battles with not only ISIS but airstrikes from Israeli fighter jets as well.

Russia had hoped to maintain a balance between Syria and Israel, but, earlier this year, a Russian II-20 surveillance plane was shot down by Syrian anti-air defense during a response to an Israeli air raid.

ISIS HAS AN AIR FORCE?

Following the incident, Moscow decided to send Damascus multiple S-300 surface-to-air missile systems as a way of enhancing their ally’s defenses.

WHO BENEFITS FROM GHOST VOTERS ... WELL ... THAT DEPENDS ON WHO WINS!

Ghost Voters ...
Deroy MurdockAugust 11, 2017 7:52 PM(Rick Wilking/Reuters)

At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote.

Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.

The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.

My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties.

“That’s enough over-registered voters to populate a ghost-state about the size of Connecticut,” Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper told me.

These 462 counties (18.5 percent of the 2,500 studied) exhibit this ghost-voter problem. These range from 101 percent registration in Delaware’s New Castle County to New Mexico’s Harding County, where there are 62 percent more registered voters than living, breathing adult citizens — or a 162 percent registration rate.

Washington’s Clark County is worrisome, given its 154 percent registration rate. This includes 166,811 ghost voters. Georgia’s Fulton County seems less nettlesome at 108 percent registration, except for the number of Greater Atlantans, 53,172, who compose that figure.

But California’s San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138 percent registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters. Los Angeles County’s 112 percent rate equals 707,475 over-registrations. Beyond the official data that it received, Judicial Watch reports that LA County employees “informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144 percent of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”

All told, California is a veritable haunted house, teeming with 1,736,556 ghost voters. Judicial Watch last week wrote Democratic secretary of state Alex Padilla and authorities in eleven Golden State counties and documented how their election records are in shambles.

“California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean elections,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton in a statement. “It is urgent that California take reasonable steps to clean up its rolls. We will sue if state officials fail to act.”

Ronald Reagan’s California has devolved into a reliably far-Left stronghold. While pristine voter rolls should be a given in a constitutional republic with democratic elections, even that improvement might be too little to make America’s most populous state competitive in presidential elections.

The same cannot be said for battleground states, in which Electoral College votes can be decided by incredibly narrow margins. Consider the multitude of ghost voters in:

‐ Colorado: 159,373

‐ Florida: 100,782

‐ Iowa: 31,077

‐ Michigan: 225,235

‐ New Hampshire: 8,211

‐ North Carolina: 189,721

‐ Virginia: 89,979

(For a deeper dive into these data, please download my spreadsheet here.)

President Donald J. Trump’s supporters might be intrigued to learn that Hillary Clinton’s margins of victory in Colorado (136,386) and New Hampshire (2,736) were lower than the numbers of ghost voters in those states. Clinton’s fans should know that Trump won Michigan (10,704) and North Carolina (173,315) by fewer ballots than ghost voters in those states.

It’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

Perhaps these facts will encourage Democrats to join the GOP-dominated effort to remove ineligible felons, ex-residents, non-citizens, and dead people from the voter rolls — for all contests, not just presidential races.

“When you have an extremely large number of stale names on the voter rolls in a county, it makes voter fraud much easier to commit,” Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R., Kan.), co-chairman of President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, told me. “It’s easier to identify a large number of names of people who have moved away or are deceased. At that point, if there is no photo-ID requirement in the state, those identities can be used to vote fraudulently.”

In fact, CBS’s Windy City affiliate last October compared local vote records with the Social Security Administration’s master death file. “In all,” the channel concluded, “the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.” KCBS–Los Angeles reported in May 2016 that 265 dead voters had cast ballots in southern California “year after year.”

Under federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act require states to maintain accurate voter lists. Nonetheless, some state politicians ignore this law. Others go further: Governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.) vetoed a measure last February that would have mandated investigations of elections in which ballots cast outnumbered eligible voters.

Even more suspiciously, when GOP governor Rick Scott tried to obey these laws and update Florida’s records, including deleting 51,308 deceased voters, Obama’s Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit to stop him. Federal prosecutors claimed that Governor Scott’s statewide efforts violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, although it applies to only five of Florida’s 67 counties. Then–attorney general Eric Holder and his team behaved as if Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders fought so valiantly in order to keep cadavers politically active.

Whether Americans consider vote fraud a Republican hoax, a Democratic tactic, or something in between, everyone should agree that it’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

READ MORE:

Why Are Democrats Afraid of the Election Integrity Commission?

The Obama Administration’s Ugly Legacy of Undermining Electoral Integrity

The Left Is Undermining Confidence in Our Elections